FACILITATION OF HEALTH-CARE-DELIVERY THROUGH ENHANCED COMMUNICATIONS

To realize the advantages of advanced computing technology in medicine we will have to blend computing and communications facilities into a seamless entity that can support ubiquitous computing for medical use. Work-group computing applications, high speed networks linking a mult iplicity of servers, and mobile computing platforms can provide the ne xt generation of devices and services for the physician. Ultimately, t he biggest challenge for communications and computing in medicine will be found in the requirement for standards in semantics and syntax in the highest levels of the OSI model. We present here our view of the f unctional requirements for physician communications and computing to m eet standard medical practice in Western societies.